I Know Words. I Have The Best Words.
One of the most important skills my parents taught me was the ability to read for pleasure. The activity gives rise to new adventures, instills a desire to experience more in life, and allows one to dive deep into interesting questions raised by authors of fiction and non-fiction alike. Anyway, I like words, and I like fiddling around with software, so I built a small tool to parse an XML word list that I built as I read interesting books. The exercise helped me learn something new about parsing, but the act of creating a list is the crucial element: it helps build vocabulary, and helps make future conversations and writing more fluid, accurate and intersting.
| Word | Definition |
|---|---|
| Anapest | A metrical foot consisting of two short or unstressed syllables followed by one long or stressed syllable |
| Anorectic | Lacking appetite; causing loss of appetite |
| Apiary | A place where bees are kept; a collection of bee hives |
| Apse | A projecting part of a building (as a church) that is usually semicircular in plan and vaulted |
| Arroyo | A watercourse (as a creek) in an arid region; a water-carved gully or channel |
| Artifice | Clever or cunning devices or expedients especially those used to trick or deceive others |
| Ascetic | Practicing strict self-denial as a measure of personal and especially spiritual discipline; austere in appearance, manner, or attitude |
| Atavistic | Recurrence in an organism of a trait or character typical of an ancestral form and usually due to genetic recombination; recurrence of or reversion to a past style, manner, outlook, or approach |
| Autochthonous | Originating where found; indigenous |
| Bellicose | Demonstrating aggression and a willingness to fight |
| Brocade | A rich silk fabric with raised patterns in gold and silver |
| Bromide | A commonplace or tiresome person; a bore; a commonplace or hackneyed statement or notion |
| Callow | Lacking adult sophistication: immature |
| Capitate | Forming a head; abruptly enlarged and globose |
| Censer | A vessel for burning incense; especially a covered incense burner swung on chains in a religious ritual |
| Chthonian | Of or relating to the underworld; infernal |
| Comte | French mathematician and philosopher; founded positivism, a scientific system of thought and knowledge |
| Corolla | The part of a flower that consists of the separate or fused petals and constitutes the inner whorl of the perianth |
| Coterie | An intimate and often exclusive group of persons with a unifying common interest or purpose |
| Diadem | A crown, specifically, a royal headband; something that adorns like a crown |
| Diurnal | Recurring every day; having a daily cycle; of, relating to, or occurring in the daytime; active chiefly in the daytime; opening during the day and closing at night |
| Dowager | A widow holding property or a title from her deceased husband; a dignified elderly woman |
| Effete | No longer fertile; having lost character, vitality, or strength; marked by weakness or decadence; soft or delicate from or as if from a pampered existence; characteristic of an effete person, e.g., a wool scarf … a bit effete on an outdoorsman; effeminate |
| Ennui | A feeling of weariness and dissatisfaction; boredom |
| Equanimity | Mental calmness, composture and evenness of temper, especially in a difficult situation |
| Eschatological | Eschatology: the branch of theology that is concerned with the end of the world or of humankind; a belief or a doctrine concerning the ultimate or final things, such as death, the destiny of humanity, the Second Coming, or the Last Judgment. |
| Fecund | Capable of producing offspring or vegetation; fruitful; marked by intellectual productivity |
| Fey | Chiefly Scottish, fated to die: doomed; marked by a foreboding of death or calamity; able to see into the future: visionary, marked by an otherworldly air or attitude; crazy, touched |
| Foment | To promote the growth or development of, to rouse or incite: to foment a rebellion |
| Garrulous | Given to prosy, rambling, or tedious loquacity: pointlessly or annoyingly talkative |
| Gastropod | Any of a large class of mollusks (as snails and slugs) usually with a univalve shell (or none) and a distinct head bearing sensory organs |
| Gelid | Very cold; icy |
| Haptic | Relating to or based on the sense of touch; characterized by a predilection for the sense of touch |
| Imprecations | A spoken curse |
| Inquietude | Physical or mental restlessness or disturbance |
| Ichthyology | A branch of zoology that deals with fish |
| Inveigle | To win over by wiles (entice); to acquire by ingenuity or flattery |
| Jejune | Lacking nutritive value; devoid of significance or interest: dull |
| Jeroboam | A wine bottle with four times the capacity of a regular bottle |
| Laconic | Using or marked by the use of few words; terse or concise |
| Lacuna | An empty space or a missing part; a gap: “self-centered in opinion, with curious lacunae of astounding ignorance”; anatomy - a cavity, space, or depression, especially in a bone, containing cartilage or bone cells. |
| Lanai | A veranda or roofed patio |
| Licentious | Lacking moral discipline or ignoring legal restraint, especially in sexual conduct |
| Lintel | A horizontal architectural member spanning and usually carrying the load above an opening |
| Loquacious | Full of excessive talk; given to fluent or excessive talk: garrulous |
| Lummox | A clumsy or stupid person |
| Mafficking | To celebrate with boisterous rejoicing and hilarious behavior |
| Mephitic | Of, relating to, or resembling mephitis (a noxious, pestilential, or foul exhalation from the earth) |
| Metaphor | A figure of speech in which a word or phrase that ordinarily designates one thing is used to designate another, thus making an implicit comparison, as in “a sea of troubles” or “All the world’s a stage” |
| Mucilaginous | Sticky, viscid; of, relating to, full of, or secreting mucilage |
| Mythos | The pattern of basic values and attitudes of a people, characteristically transmitted through myths and the arts |
| Nacre | Mother of pearl |
| Nave | The hub of a wheel; the main part of the interior of a church; especially, the long narrow central hall in a cruciform church that rises higher than the aisles flanking it to form a clerestory |
| Obdurate | A stubbornly persistent in wrongdoing; hardened in feelings; resistant to persuasion or softening influences |
| Obsequious | Marked by or exhibiting a fawning attentiveness |
| Odalisque | A female slave; a concubine in a harem |
| Officious | Archaic: kind, obliging, dutiful; volunteering one’s services where they are neither asked nor needed; meddlesome |
| Onanistic | Masturbation; self-gratification |
| Osculation | The act of kissing |
| Otiose | Producing no useful result: futile; being at leisure: idle; lacking use or effect: functionless |
| Paladin | A paragon of chivalry; a heroic champion |
| Pellucid | Admitting maximum passage of light without diffusion or distortion; reflecting light evenly from all surfaces; easy to understand |
| Penurious | Unwilling to spend money: stingy; yielding little: barren; poverty-stricken: destitute |
| Piquant | Agreeably stimulating to the palate; especially: spicy; engagingly provocative; also: having a lively arch charm |
| Pique | Transient feeling of wounded vanity: resentment |
| Pithy | Consisting of or abounding in pith; having substance and point: tersely cogent |
| Podalic | Of or relating to the foot |
| Potentates | Ruler, sovereign; broadly: one who wields great power or sway |
| Pouilly-fume | A dry white wine from the Loire valley of France |
| Prelate | An ecclesiastic (as a bishop or abbot) of superior rank |
| Prevaricating | To deviate from the truth |
| Priggish | Fop; fellow, person; one who offends or irritates by observance of proprieties (as of speech or manners) in a pointed manner or to an obnoxious degree |
| Primmest | Precise or proper to the point of affectation; excessively decorous; strait-laced, prudish |
| Privation | Lack of the basic necessities or comforts of life; the condition resulting from such lack; an act, condition, or result of deprivation or loss |
| Prosaic | Characteristic of prose as distinguished from poetry: factual; dull, unimaginative; everyday; ordinary |
| Prurient | Marked by or arousing an immoderate or unwholesome interest or desire; especially, marked by, arousing, or appealing to unusual sexual desire |
| Pugilistic | The skill, practice, and sport of fighting with the fists; boxing |
| Pyrrhic | Achieved at excessive cost; costly to the point of negating or outweighing expected benefits |
| Revetment | A facing (as of stone or concrete) to sustain an embankment; embankments, especially a barricade to provide shelter (as against bomb fragments or strafing) |
| Rubicund | Ruddy |
| Sagacious | Of keen and farsighted penetration and judgment; discerning, as in sagacious judge of character; caused by or indicating acute discernment, as in sagacious purchase of stock |
| Salubrious | Favorable to or promoting health or well-being |
| Satyr | A woodland creature depicted as having the pointed ears, legs, and short horns of a goat and a fondness for unrestrained revelry; a licentious man; a lecher. |
| Scarab | A stone or faience (glazed ceremic ware) beetle used in ancient Egypt as a talisman, ornament, and a symbol of resurrection |
| Sidereal | Of, relating to, or concerned with the stars or constellations; stellar |
| Simony | The buying or selling of a church office or ecclesiastical preferment |
| Sororal | Of, relating to, or characteristic of a sister |
| Squamous | Covered with or formed of scales |
| Succor | Relief, aid, help; something that furnishes relief |
| Sylph | An elemental being in the theory of Paracelsus that inhabits air; a slender graceful woman or girl |
| Synod | A council or an assembly of church officials or churches; an ecclesiastical council |
| Tendentious | Expressing or intending to promote a particular cause or point of view, especially a controversial one |
| Theophany | A visible manifestation of a deity |
| Torpid | Deprived of the power of motion or feeling; benumbed; dormant; hibernating |
| Torpor | A state of mental or physical inactivity or insensibility; the dormant, inactive state of a hibernating or estivating animal |
| Troglodyte | A member of a fabulous or prehistoric race of people that lived in caves, dens, or holes; a person considered to be reclusive, reactionary, out of date, or brutish |
| Turbid | Having sediment or foreign particles stirred up or suspended; muddy |
| Turgid | Excessively ornate or complex in style or language; grandiloquent; swollen or distended, as from a fluid; bloated |
| Ursine | Of or relating to a bear or the bear family; suggesting or characteristic of a bear |
| Vapid | Lacking liveliness, animation, or interest; dull |
| Wrought | Physical or mental effort or activity directed toward the production or accomplishment of something |